You can replace the band and the battery and they gave it a 5 out of 10?! I thought I was being generous giving it a 2.
Thatâs not really unusual, though, right? I mean, itâs a watch. Thereâs a trade-off between user-serviceability and size, and once youâre down to watch-size thereâs pretty much no way to make it easily serviceable. Everythingâs got to be tightly integrated or it wonât fit.
I thought they said screen, band, and battery. Did I miss something?
I figure those will be the most likely things to fail, so if theyâre the ones that can be repaired, thatâs a start, right?
There is a special place in Hell for the designers, and if possible should be some sort of tax on the products to disincentive them on the marketplace for the designs, that intentionally produce difficult-to-repair things.
Are you basing your comparison with some actual ultra-modular user upgradeable watch that exists, or the platonic ideal?
Even the infamous âterrorist Casioâ of the âplatform for modificationsâ reputation isnât really supposed to be user-serviceable beyond strap and battery, as far as I know.
(I do prefer the Stainless Steel With Link Bracelet version myself, for that slightly more upscale retromodern look. And the price is right.)
Iâd be the first to agree that their scoring system is a bitâŚideosyncratic; but this seemed comparatively fair:
Screen came off without too much incident, which is important because those are pretty galling if scratched or cracked.
Battery was replaceable, and thatâs the part that will, inevitably, die within a few years at most, so thatâs good.
Not much else was; but everything else was some sort of BGA package on a lilliputan circuit board anway, so the difference between âwe then popped the metal heat spreader off the S1 and you can see the chips belowâ and âthe S1 is a blob of epoxyâ are academic for anyone without access to sophisticated rework gear and the correct chips.
Their numerical scores are hopelessly subjective and vague; but my takeaway was 'screen, check. battery, check", and there really wasnât anything else youâd expect to be able to replace.
Apple can definitely be nasty about their miniaturization, to the point where you have to start suspecting actual dickery, rather than mere desire for thinness(this is a really nice one: if you accidentally insert the 1.3mm screw in the hole where the 1.2mm screw should go, you damage the logic board enough to render the device inoperableâŚ); but Iâm not sure how any device at this scale is going to be terribly user-serviceable.
Even if we were looking at the dev-board version of this, laid out nice and flat without the constraints of the case, weâd pretty much have screen, battery, bunch of high-density BGA components. BGA rework isnât impossible or anything; but it raises the bar substantially compared to mere surface mount, which is itself nastier than through-hole(which is meaner than wire wrap).
Iâm definitely much further in the direction of âmake it big, robust, and modular; and can I get that in black powdercoated steel?â than the market at large; but even in those environments some parts are black boxes.(A DIMM, say, is nice to be able to swap out, and I wouldnât want it soldered down; but the chips on it or the traces within its PCB would be hell to rework).
Yes, itâs not repairable, but look at the positive side; thereâll be a new one out by the time this one breaks.
Thatâs an offense that deserves shooting after a quick court-martial staffed with pissed-off repairmen.
âŚare us two enough for a market niche? I love powder-coated steel!
BGAs suck. I hate hate HATE that form factor. Where attaching a wire to an unused pin would be a quick job with a microscope and a fine-tipped soldering iron, it becomes a risky torturous ordeal with hot air and expensive equipment. (âBGA. Got the balls?â)
I have some leftover GPS modules and they donât have the 1-pps signal broken out. It is at the bottom of the BGA, inaccessible to me. I need that signal for some global-sync experimentsâŚ
(Todo: get some decommissioned BGA hardware with small chips (cellphone wrecks, perhaps?) and practice the hot air techniquesâŚ)
Thought⌠would a dental xray tube give good enough resolution to reconstruct the traces within multilayer circuitboards, if several exposures at different angles are used (essentially an xray tomography)?
The killer is shipping costs. My current âBuild a desk that (unlike so called âcomputer desksâ actually fits computers) from server racks and industrial shelving componentsâ project is running into more âamazingly low price on Ebay, Local Pickup Onlyâ hits than anything Iâve tried priorâŚ
As for BGAs, I can understand why they use them; but that doesnât make them fun(double if theyâve been underfilled with some Epoxy of The Old Gods that is resistant to everything). For your GPS units, though, you might have luck with this technique, if they arenât underfilled.
I saw such deals for old electron microscopes. But they were all on the wrong continentâŚ
Assuming the xray tomography works, could this be alleviated by microdrilling a hole through the board (avoiding severing the other traces), right into the ball we need? Then soldering in a wire by inserting and heating it?
Nice one. However, no permanent attachment. Little use if thereâs no trace from that ball out. 
The xray tomography may be an alternative here.
âŚand thankyouverymuch, now I am in the microtomography rabbit hole. Here goes the evening!
Yep, pretty hard to repair for most people. OTOH, not many people can repair a traditional watch, either.
Many canât even change the battery in a traditional watch.
Mechanical watches have been repairable since their invention, and they use hella fiddly little parts.
Really, itâs just a question of reassembling the components in the correct sequenceâŚ
Yeah screw TI for making those TTL chips which I canât rewire.
Yes, with electronics sold for their small size, there really are limits to how much the manufacturer can do to make sure the 1 in 50,000 of their customers who wants to can take it apart without breaking it.
The world needs an opensource and cheap SEM/focused ion beam desktop deviceâŚ
Spin it as a recycling thing, mandate it. Problem solved.
